Foster Nightmare!

I know some of you have already read this one, but due to my lack of sleep lately some of it was lacking some details! The purple notes are new so you don't have to re-read the whole thing!

My little orange kitty has passed away. I came home last Tuesday and I really wished he was just sleeping, but he was beyond “just sleeping.” It was really sad to have to come home to that, especially when he was just walking around the house that morning. I'm not sure exactly what happened to the kitty, but my guess is that he was just too young and he could have possibly been sick or got something at the shelter. There were a lot of sneezing cats in there the day that I took him home. So that left me with the other kitty, that stayed in the cat room and hissed at my dogs. Yippee, I thought about bringing him back to the shelter, but I believe it was Wednesday morning; Ally and the little kitty were kinda playing together. There were some interesting noises and Ally would go to pounce on the little kitty, but then she would start licking his head and ears. Pretty cute! Then over the last couple days he began coming out of the room and exploring the house. He even got curious at breakfast time while all the other animals were eating. So I got his bowl and after a couple redirections, he was sitting there eating his food. So now he eats in line with the other animals. He is even warming up to the dogs. He was actually snuggling with Zoey, the main dog he would hiss at! The little gray kitty has also been playing more and is more interactive with me as well. I have also been working on holding him. When he first came, he would wiggle, cry, and squirm if you tried holding him. Now I can actually hold him for a minute or so before he’s ready to go. Tons of progress for this little kitty in just a few days! I guess this could be a foster success story as well! So I brought home two kittens, mainly so I could help the little one, the little one that I liked so much passed away, and now I’m in love with the other! Although there is a possibility that he could be a foster failure, a term coined by another foster mom I have met to describe the animals that she fostered and then adopted! Now I just need a name other than little kitty!
Work became very, very slooooow for a while since I moved to the south. I was averaging about 1 call a day and that included follow ups. I was asking everyone if they needed help because I had caught up on all my paperwork, cleaned my truck, my shoes, and my desk. So bored. But then, the pager… So much for the south being slow. Thursday I didn’t make it home from work until Friday morning at about 1am, and found Zoey greeting me at the door. (Yes, lovely! I need to fix the roof of the kennel now, but fortunately she just decided to spread things around the house for me, rather than really destroy anything.) I think she jumped on top of her dog house and then was able to jump through a hole in the tarp that covered the top of the kennel. She's pretty agile when she wants to be. She got into a lot of the dog toys/ leashes and such and spread them all over the house, but not where Kahlua has access. Kahlua's behind another gate that Zoey can easily jump over. The only thing that made it outside were lots of doggy treats. Zoey was nice enough to jump over the gate with treats in mouth and share with Kahlua. She had to make at least 3 trips to get all the treats she did. Crazy dogs! Anyway, so that was a long day, went back to work on Friday, was all set to go home at five and then...another call! Got home about 8pm and then it was actually pretty quiet for a while. I slept in, caught up on some sleep. Saturday I did get a couple pages, but didn’t have to go out on them, until 10:30pm that is. I got a bite call and had to go out to the south. I didn’t get to the dog owner’s house until almost midnight. Fortunately she was still awake, but she had a hard time finding her rabies vaccination info. I really wanted her to find it, because without that proof the dog would have to go to the shelter for quarantine. If she had the proof we could set up a home quarantine and save her and the dog some stress. So I gave her some time to find it, but after her searching and searching I had to start pushing the fact that the dog was going to have to come with me. After being there over an hour she finally had the dog in my truck. Then to show the dog that I was friendly she grabbed me and pulled me up next to her to show the dog I was a friend. At first it was fine, but then she did it three times. It still didn’t work as the dog didn’t like me or my catch pole too much. Fortunately I was able to park close to the kennel he was going into so there wasn’t too much fuss. So by the time I finished impounding the dog, completed the bite report, and made it home, it was about 3am. Needless to say I came home and passed out. Until about 7:45 that is, cause the pager went off again, twice. Both were “aggressive” pit bulls. I got a hold of one and she admitted the dog was friendly, so I told her to call Monday. The other I couldn’t get a hold of by phone so I headed out. When I get there the caller said the dog wasn’t really aggressive (even though he had used that exact terminology on his message) and he had actually pet the dog, but he had seen the dog in his yard and it was chasing his cats up onto his roof. When I went to the dog owner's house the dog was in the garage and the front gates to the property were open. Anyway, I found the dog owner and he had a lovely morning when I woke him up and wrote him a citation. Fun times! At least I didn’t have the North pager this weekend, I talked to the North officer and he said his pager was going off almost every half hour. Yikes!!
Hopefully that didn’t seem too whiny, I really do love the excitement and spontaneity of the job, just not on 3 hours of sleep! I have now had 8 hours of sleep for the last two nights combined. I should probably go to bed now! I think I am at about 24 hours of OT for the week, including my lovely call at 2:45 this morning.
Thanks for reading, I hope this finds everyone well!